And he was, hands down, one of the most competent and integrity-filled public officials I ever met.

In my business, we are taught to be skeptical of everything. Our motto: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”

Well, Jim was the exception. Whenever a politician or bureaucrat was trying give me the old razzle-dazzle about some costly bond deal or shady investment, Jim would give me the straight dope.

Many public offices give you the run-around. Jim just gives you the numbers.

Haynie said she did the same for her – and residents of Orange County.

“He never failed to give me good advice,” she said. “Yet he never wanted credit for it.”

“And as seductive as some these investment bankers were, Jim never wavered from saying when they were wrong.”

As evidence, look back to when the expressway authority got mired down in controversial and costly “swap” deals. Moye knew they were too risky. So the county avoided them – avoiding millions of dollars in fees.

Another time, Haynie said that Moye correctly told her to withdraw from a state investment pool for local governments – long before the fund turned into a mess with assets frozen. “That saved us tens of millions of dollars,” Haynie said.

Just as importantly, Moye was willing to speak truth to power – to politicians, campaign donors, special interests, it didn’t matter. Former Mayor Linda Chapin even used to joke about a time when Moye chased her down for expensing a tip larger than county policy allowed ... by something like a few cents.

The vignette -- which I remembered hearing as a county beat reporter back in the late 90s -- was kind of funny. But it also spoke to Jim being a stickler for the rules – regardless of who he was dealing with. And it let sent a message to everyone else who walked through the doors.

“His sense of what the right thing to do is at his core,” Haynie said. “He didn’t care if people were angry at him. And a lot of people were angry at him a lot.”

It speaks awfully well of Haynie that she had someone like Moye as her most trusted adviser.